Meet Preston Swirnoff | Musician, Artist, Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Preston Swirnoff and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Preston, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
It wasn’t really a choice…I think I’ve been making art and creative projects since I was a small child. I don’t know why but it just came out of me from as far back as I can remember. A lot of us run from what we really should be doing because it’s hard or scary or isn’t popular with our family or doesn’t have a prescribed path to success. I’ve realized that the more true one is to themselves, the richer their life becomes and the more they have to offer others.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?

As a multidisciplinary artist, I create installations and performances that center on ritual, primary experience, and embodiment. So what do those words mean in relation to an experience of art? Ritual is something sorely lacking for most people in this part of the world today. A ritual is an action that carves out a separate space to take us out of everyday humdrum existence by connecting us intimately to both our true essence and something greater than ourselves. If most of what we do is based in marketplace realities, material concerns, consumerism, and the attention economy of technology, then participating in rituals experienced in person, embodied, can be a sort of medicine to remind us we have a soul, that we aren’t here to simply be widgets striving for nicer lifestyles and success.

Emile Durkheim spoke about how rituals form a practice of “marking off and maintaining distance between these two realms”. Participating in a ritual is a way to reaffirm the dignity of being alive and to acknowledge the sacred by entering a space that creates a temporary leave from your everyday mind and body. This doesn’t mean I equate art with religion, not at all. I just know that they can tap into similar regions of our consciousness, those which yearn for transcendence, connection, and expanded perception. We’ve seen examples of art ritual in the Fluxus happenings, the environmental installations of Christo and Jean Claude, the intimate performance art of Marina Abramović, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, the icon carvings and paintings of the Orthodox church, and even the marching band processions of New Orleans funerals or Brazilian carnival.

I’m not a painter so I tend to have a more cinematic and musical imagination that creates moods, emotional centers, intimate spaces, and uses visual-perceptual phenomena. I usually involve sound, light, reflection, repetition, and distortion in some way. I don’t like to inject too many of my own meanings into the head of the viewer or talk them into how to feel about it. I’d rather it takes on a life of its own that can surprise me as much as anyone. I agree with the existential psychologist Emmy Van Deurzen: “Use dialogue for wisdom, rather than argumentation for warfare.”

My first three installations along these lines have been created in the past year. ‘Stained Glass Enters the Stream’ featured a room-long analog tape loop of a sine wave chord that was tuned precisely using a system by the great composer La Monte Young. Underneath the floating tape was my electric organ playing shifting chords of its own each hour from dusk until late night. And behind the organ on the wall was a circular rotating light sculpture with the appearance of stained glass and wire text created by Spenser Little. ‘Score for a Light Chord’ used prism phenomena with single beam LED lights, color filters, and hanging sheets of plexiglass to create two chords in the form of undulating light cathedrals in a design studio’s window display. Visitors and passersby could listen to the musical chord that became the score for the light chord. ‘Many Ways in Which to Love’ will be the next installation using experimental ikebana of flower and plant arrangements in water filled glass and ceramics that become shadow plays with colored lights, rice paper, fabrics, and mirrors to create a living cinema in real time. These fragile elements are employed to create a space of intimacy, contemplation, natural beauty, and the poetic, often confusing nature of love in its many forms.

I’ve also been returning to my first art form, solo piano, and creating versions of pieces that seem to connect somehow to what I’ve talked about here. Recently, I’ve been studying with the Ukrainian pianist Lubomyr Melnyk and writing some new music for piano while performing pieces by Alice Coltrane, Mal Waldron, Kaaji Saariaho, Giacinto Scelsi, and Sean Francis Conway.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?

The best parts of San Diego are its natural beauty and the pockets of cultural communities dotted throughout the city with their own neighborhood character. So I always take visitors to swim in the sea, hike around it, and view it from cliffs and bluffs: Cabrillo National Monument, Sunset Cliffs, Blacks, LJ Caves, Moonlight Beach. If they like mountains and longer hikes: Mission Trails and Kwaay Paay Peak.

I’d show them unique spots like the salt mines and bike trail in Chula Vista, secret favorite taco trucks, the ferry to Coronado, Chicano Park and Barrio Logan, of course Balboa Park, and many more. For food, I’d take them to the real deal: Alforon Lebanese, Tacos el Gordo, Supannee Thai, Siamo Napoli(!!), El Zarape, Himalayan Curry and Grill, Soichi Sushi, Convoy Street, one of the many great Ethiopian spots, etc. We’d visit people I love in their backyards, parks, or local pubs in Golden Hill, South Park, Mission Hills. Then, short drives to Tijuana, Jacumba Hot Springs, or Mt Laguna could make the itinerary. Stops for coffee at Dark Horse, Heartwork, Longplay Hifi, Coffee & Tea Collective, and Por Vida. Most importantly, a bottle of volcanic Sardinian wine at Clos in University Heights

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?

I first have to express gratitude to my parents, brother, and extended family for teaching me about unconditional love, loyalty, and selflessness. So many people don’t grow up with that in their lives and I don’t take it for granted. Next, I am so thankful to have an amazing group of very close, supportive friends who are always there for me. Finally, all of my ancestors who risked great peril and faced horrible hardships just to survive and get somewhere they could have a life. They were brave, resilient, and had faith in the future- I’m only here because of them.

My other ancestors are the writers, musicians, artists, philosophers, theologians, adventurers, and disrupters who talk to me through their words, their art, their messages from the great beyond. They are my personal library.

Website: prestonswirnoff.com

Instagram: prestonswir

Image Credits
Ed Mello Natasha Kozaily Richard Isabella Preston Swirnoff